S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (146 page)

Nobody asked where they were going.

The truck rocked as Gilfoy slowly drove it out of the warehouse. The tires rose and fell multiple times, shattering bones, crushing flesh. And then they were out and the Undead who had not fallen beneath the wheels followed behind them, slapping their dead hands against the sides and moaning in hunger.

Nobody spoke.

Eric felt as if he weighed a million pounds, yet there was this incredible lightness about him, too. His body possessed no more strength, yet he felt like he could just stand up and fly.

He knew it was the exhaustion doing that to him. That and the pain medication Gilfoy had made him take. It separated the physical from the mental until they seemed completely disconnected.

He lowered his head into his arms and closed his eyes and let the rocking of the truck carry him away.

* * *

He didn't know how long he'd been out, a few minutes maybe, though it seemed much longer. The short nap had done him wonders, rejuvenating him. He remembered someone talking about a flat tire and the truck stopping for a while until it was fixed.

Then they were moving again.

He lifted his head and peered at the gloom inside the truck, recognizing the people they'd saved. Some were still sobbing. Some seemed asleep. Most were just sitting there in shock, their eyes wide and white. The roar of the engine seemed overly loud. The air was unbelievably hot.

He turned to one side, where he sensed someone close by. Then to the other.

“How much farther,” he wanted to ask, but the words came out of his throat without sound, no more than a whisper, nothing more.

The truck slowed. He could hear the gears grind, then shift. They went over some kind of bump — a curb, maybe, or a speed bump, the front tires, left, then right, then the back — tilting the truck and jostling them all. He pushed himself up, lurching with the movement, astonished that his arm didn't hurt anymore.

It's the pain meds.

They had to be powerful stuff.

Now standing, and he could feel their eyes on him, wary, curious, waiting to see what he was doing, where he was going. He hadn't given it any thought, hadn't even intended to stand, but now that he was up, he figured he'd go and check with Gilfoy.

Except his feet didn't take him in that direction.

The truck accelerated suddenly, throwing him off balance. He fell into the huddled group in the middle. They yelled in surprise and anger, cursing him for his clumsiness. He tried to apologize, but his mouth didn't seem to be able to form the words.

Sorry. Sorry
, he kept repeating, as he rolled into the back door.
I didn't mean to fall on you. Is everyone okay?

He turned around again. The young girl was staring at him, leaning away. Her boyfriend, or whatever he was, glared too. Eric leaned over to apologize and the truck tilted as they went around a turn. He fell against her, pulled away. She was screaming now, clutching her cheek. It was bleeding. Somehow, half her face seemed to be missing.

Her screams pierced his skull, drove him half insane. He watched his hands reach out for her, pull her close until her face blurred out of focus. Blood was everywhere now, on his hands, in his eyes.

What the hell is happening?
he screamed. His voice sounded like moaning to his ears.

The boyfriend's hand was bleeding now.

Stop it!

Someone else clutched at their neck, at the blood spurting out.

Where? Where is it?

He stumbled, clutched at a man—

(Peter Fortini, he remembered, though he couldn't remember getting back up on his feet again)

—and wouldn't let him go, despite trying to.

What the hell is going on here?

Everyone was screaming now, pushing at each other, pushing him away. He tried to look around to find the Infected person that seemed to have made it onto the truck with them, but his head wouldn't obey him. Or his hands. Or his own legs.

His mouth opened, as if to sound the scream in his mind, but all that came out was a whistle of air. He lunged at the boyfriend and tore off the muscle from his arm, ripping it from shoulder to elbow. And he started to chew.

Stop it!
he screamed, horrified at what he was doing.
Oh god, please. No!

Instead, he took another bite from someone's arm.

And swallowed.

 

Jessie jogged, and the miles passed quickly beneath her feet. She really did feel lighter, physically as well as mentally, now that she'd come to terms with the victims of the outbreak. The term Undead now sounded distasteful to her ears, even insulting. These people weren't dead, and they certainly hadn't died. Their bodies had been severed from their minds is all, allowing the former to revert to some primal state while the latter remained trapped. She'd come up with a new term to describe them, one which seemed more appropriate as well as more accurate: Discorporated.

She tried to figure out how it all worked, why the mind remained tethered, yet unable to exert itself on the body. This led to other questions. What happened to the mind after death, for example, when there was no Reanimation virus to keep the body from decaying?

She assumed it also died. Or was released. Maybe it traveled to some other spectral realm.

And what about the ones whose brains had dried to powder? Did their minds still exist?

At some point she pushed the thoughts aside. She wasn't religious, nor was she any kind of philosopher. She preferred to operate in the physical, logical world, not the metaphysical, though her recent enlightenment had forced her to accept the alternative. As someone had once written, there were more things in this world than she could possibly conceive.

She reached the outskirts of South Huntington shortly after noon and knew that Jayne's Hill was well within reach in less than an hour. It was a punishing pace, yet she felt cleansed by it, as if the miles she'd put behind her had some sort of healing effect. Maybe it was just getting away from the wall that did it, the wall and the Live Players she'd had to kill.

Or maybe it was knowing that with each passing minute she'd cheated death yet again, and would continue to cheat it until Death itself were defeated.

She came to the first sign for Jayne's Hill, and it was there that she saw the figure up ahead, standing as still as a statue, like so many others she'd seen along the way. And yet, there was something different about this one. It wasn't one of the Discorporated. The clothes were too clean, too new, too intact. Was it another Live Player?

Jessie slowed to a walk. Her heart was racing, and she was out of breath, which she now realized wasn't the best way to be facing someone who might want to kill you.

The person was alive. She knew that before she figured out it was a woman. She had been watching Jessie approach without making a move. The Discorporated wouldn't do that.

A hundred yards away, the woman stepped forward. There was something vaguely familiar about her that made Jessie uneasy. She pulled out her sword and slowed her pace even more.

The woman was wearing tan-colored clothing, rather than the usual Arc black. Her head and face were covered. She carried a short stick in one hand, polished and lethal-looking. On her back, pulled tight against her, was an expensive-looking pack.

A hundred feet now. The woman reached up and pulled back her hood.

Recognition slammed into Jessie, stealing her breath away and knocking all sense from her mind. “You?”

Siennah Davenport smiled, but even from that distance, Jessie could tell there was nothing but madness behind it. She raised her sword and said in as loud a voice as she dared, “You need to stop right there.”

In response, Siennah raised the stick. For a fleeting moment, Jessie thought it was a rifle, but the way her classmate was holding it, she realized it was a policeman's baton.

“I said stop.”

“You're going to have to do better than that, bitch,” Siennah hissed. “I didn't come all the way here just to have you tell me to turn around and go home.”

“How did you get here?”

“We followed your husband.”

“Kelly? He's here?”

“He and that ape friend of his snuck onto the island a couple nights ago. Them and some old hag I've never seen before. We followed them in my car, me and the Anderson twins, except they got caught.”

“Caught?”

“I told them to run when the police showed up, but the stupid cows were too slow.” Sienna shrugged. “Probably for the best. They would've ended up zombie bait here anyway.”

Jessie didn't say anything.

“I almost got lost coming across the Sound. Thought a few times that I'd get blown out of the water. But if your husband didn't, then I figured I wouldn't either. ‘Course, once I got inside, I totally lost sight of him. Couldn't keep up. Always hated running. But that's all right, because I knew they'd be headed here to find you. Turns out my hunch was right.”

They were fifty feet apart now, Siennah still closing the gap, though at a much slower rate.

“I don't want to fight you,” Jessie said, keeping her voice low.

“I get it. But I'm still going to kill you.”

“Siennah, please, this isn't a game anymore.”

“Fuck the game. I mean, fuck
The Game
.” She raised her hands and made air quotes with her fingers. “Think I care about Arc? No, this is about you and me and working out our mutual hatred for each other.”

She's crazy.

“I don't hate you, Siennah.”

“Sure you do.” The girl's maniacal smile spread even wider. “I think we can stop lying to each other. It doesn't become us.”

Jessie raised the sword again and pointed the tip at her head. “Okay, yeah. I guess I do hate you. But I hate even more that you
bought
Micah after he was conscripted, like he was just some object—”

Siennah laughed sharply. “He
was
an object, bitch. The moment he was conscripted, he became property to be bought and sold.” She smiled darkly, tilting her head coyly at her. “Does that bother you?”

Jessie glared at her.

“Fucking waste of money he was, though,” Siennah huffed. “Wasn't worth a damn penny, if you ask me. All hype and no substance, just like the rest of you jackers.”

“You think you know so much. You think you're so much better than anyone else, just because you have money and your dad's the mayor.”

“Don't you get it, zombitch?” Siennah said, stopping just beyond the reach of Jessie's sword. “I don't need those things. I'm better than you, not because of the money or my family. Who the hell gives a fuck about those assholes, anyway? I'm better than all of you because I can see things clearly. I'm not afraid to be ruthless.”

“He doesn't know you're here, does he? Your father, he has no idea.”

“Fuck him. All he cares about is his little perverted dead-sex fantasy world. Mom's just a fucking jellyfish. The bitch just lets him do whatever the fuck he wants!”

Her face was crimson, her eyes bulging with rage.

Jessie lowered the sword slightly and picked with the tip at the pocket on Siennah's chest. She lifted the flap, exposing a corner of a plastic baggie. “It's those pills, isn't it? You never used to be like this.”

They were circling each other now, barely six feet separating them. Siennah swiped at the sword with her arm. If the blade had been turned slightly, she might've cut herself.

“Mind your own fucking business, Zombitch.”

“And what is my business?”

“To die, I told you. That's why I came here, to kill you.”

“For the reward? They won't give it to you.”

Siennah barked out another laugh, louder this time. It carried to the trees and returned nearly as loud. Jessie shot a nervous glance around her, wondering how long it would take for them to emerge from their hiding places. Maybe she could position herself so that they would cut her off from this raving lunatic Siennah had turned into. What the hell kind of person would risk everything to come here out of some misguided sense of revenge?

Maybe you?

Jessie tried one last time to talk to her. “You need to let me go, Siennah. The outages? They're because of a virus in the network. Arc's codex has been trying to fight it, but it can't. When it finally runs out of options, it's going to kill us all.”

“I said no more lying.”

“I'm not. Arc programmed it as a self defense mechanism, Siennah. You need to believe me. It's going to activate all of our implants.”

A flicker of doubt crossed the girl's face. “I don't have to believe anything you say. I just have to finish what I came to do.”

“And then what? We are all going to die unless I can stop this. You, too.”

“You're going to have to get past me if you want to keep playing,” she said. She raised her hand and batted the sword to the side again, this time remembering to use the stick.

“It's not a fucking game!”

“Sure it is. It's all a game, Jessica
Daniels
, Daughter of the Zombies!”

“You shut up!”

Siennah slapped harder at the sword. “Bit unfair, don't you think? You with that and me with nothing but a piece of wood.”

“I didn't ask you to come here.”

“Come on. Put it down. I'll do the same. We can settle this with our bare hands.”

“I'm not putting—”

This time the slap came hard and fast, wrenching Jessie's wrist and knocking the sword out of her hand. There was a blur as Siennah swung again. Jessie ducked back just as the baton whistled past barely an inch in front of her eyes. As she spun away, she caught a glimpse of something shiny in the girl's other hand. She'd been hiding an EM pistol behind her back.

Jessie reacted without conscious thought, continuing her spin like a dancer. She thrust out her unplanted foot, letting her momentum add to the power of the kick. The heel of her shoe caught Siennah on the ribs below her right arm, and the baton flew through the air and clattered to the road. She stumbled back in surprise, momentarily forgetting about the gun in her hand. It was all the time Jessie needed.